Last week Guido brought you the report claiming that left-wing think tanks are more transparent than their right-wing counterparts. One of the think tanks awarded the top A-rating by Who Funds You was the New Economics Foundation, who state on their website: “the NEFbelieves that organisations advocating political change should be open about how they are funded.”

Funny then that a £200k per annum donor to the NEF, the Network for Social Policy, says on its own website that: “the Network for Social Change is a group of individuals providing anonymous funding for progressive social change“.

Guido isn’t sure how a think tank with donors seeking to remain anonymous can be described as transparent…

A new report has claimed that left-wing think tanks are more transparent than their right-wing counterparts. New left-wing pressure group Who Funds You awards an A-rating to the likes of left-of-centre campaigns IPPR, Progress and Compass, while laying into the right-of-centre Adam Smith Institute and the Taxpayers’ Alliance for their supposed lack of openness. Ignoring of course that right-of-centre think tanks don’t usually take public money from the taxpayers. Left-wing think tanks benefit from a lot of taxpayers’ money, IPPR for example got £800,000 of taxpayers’ money via the EU…

UPDATE: The ASI have hit back:

Great news – the Adam Smith Institute has been ranked top for respecting donor privacy: http://t.co/4JhrKeth

Earlier this month Guido broke the news that No.10 SpAd Dr Sean Worth had quit his job to take up a post at Policy Exchange. Putting his head above the parapet for the first time since, the good doctor appeared on Newsnight last night. If only Worth’s former colleagues could say these things like this while still in government…

On the Today programme yesterday morning Ed Balls claimed Osborne has made a giant mistake and cuts in public spending are the same mistake made by Snowden in the 1930s. Balls is wrong, as a recent pamphlet from the Centre for Policy Studies by George Trefgarne shows. After the 1929-31 Wall Street Crash the British economy recovered rapidly in the 1930s:

If only we currently had a growth rate like they averaged in the thirties…

Guido has always seen state-funded charities as a constant source of annoyance. Today the Institute of Economic Affairs calls on the government to bring an end to lobbying by charities that receive taxpayers’ money. They even quote Guido’s jibe about fake charities from last year:

“A charity that relies in the main part on taxes is no more a charity than a prostitute is your girlfriend”.

Guido has often taken the left-wing iPPR think-tank to task for some of its craziest policy ideas, the never ending hyper-Keynesian fallacies it pumps out and for flogging access for cash in the past. So when they come out with a good idea it is a noteworthy shock.

They are advocating the nationwide adoption of a crime-tracking app to enable victims in to follow their case through the criminal justice system.

The courts, CPS and police should ensure that data is shared and that victims can follow their cases all the way from first report to sentencing.

Crime maps should be made interactive and display real-time information to change them from being purely a tool of transparency and accountability to one that could help prevent and reduce crime.

The courts should become more accessible and transparent by publishing details online of the progress of cases, transcripts, judgements and sentences.

The criminal justice system at times seems to be in near chaos, cases get lost, villains escape justice, victims get lost in the confusion. Transparency would increase the pressure on the “supply chain” management of the system. When things go wrong victims will become aware of where and when it went wrong and pressure can be applied to rectify the problem.

Guido understands that real-time crime mapping is already a Downing Street priority, this data sharing idea for the wider criminal justice system will chime with government thinking. No doubt the ludicrously inefficient Courts and cops will have objections…

Special Adviser to the Prime Minister Sean Worth is departing government to head up an investigation into better public services at Policy Exchange. It seems to be mid-term transfer season with lots of SpAds looking to move on and out. […]

Tom Clougherty is leaving his post as Executive Director of the Adam Smith Institute at the end of April. He will be taking up a new post as Managing Editor of the libertarian Reason Foundation think-tank in Washington DC.[…]

The link between think-tank research and its “sponsors” has always been opaque. A cynical man would say companies bung a load of cash to shape supposedly independent research, but wonks wil always stress that their final recommendations are free from […]

Quote of the Day

“I read more bloggers now than mainstream columnists, because they’ve got more interesting things to say. Too many columnists today make you think, ‘Yeah, I think you’ve said that 10 times before and I’ve just noticed your column has not go a single fact in it’”.